The path forward for Aquila isn’t totally clear, and it’s bound to encounter more bumps along the way. But Zuckerberg is resolute: billions of people who can’t access the internet deserve it. And for Facebook to achieve his long-term vision, everyone is going to need access to more bandwidth than they have today.

Sounds very humanitarian. Until you remember that Facebook makes it’s money through advertising, and can only show year-over-year growth if more users are connected to Facebook than the year before. Once you’ve hit the saturation rate for your population, the only way you can increase revenue is if you can access more population. Facebook has become so enormous, if it wants to continue to grow it’s user base, it has to literally invent the technologies needed to push internet connectivity to the rest of the planet.

Scientists regard vegetative buffers as the most cost-effective and fair means of controlling polluted runoff from farms and developments; the Senate budget would have them repealed and would schedule the repeal of state requirements for buffers along the Neuse River, the Tar-Pamlico River, the Catawba River on December 31, 2019— even if no alternative is in place.

“This provision isn’t a tweak, it’s a sledgehammer,” said Molly Diggins, state director of the North Carolina Sierra Club in a statement. “It is as if the Senate has forgotten how important our waterways are for tourism, recreation, and drinking water.”

It’s not that the Republican Senate has forgotten about our waterways, it’s that they just don’t care.

In a bold move today, National Geographic Magazine has announced a rebranding effort. Purchased by 21st Century Fox, the new “Climate-Denial Geographic” is preparing its first issue detailing the wonders of capitalism, a new sponsored inquiry showing global-cooling, and why some species are being deprecated to encourage thriving populations of more robust, human-friendly species.

To promote the magazine, Glen Beck will be featuring CDG Writers and Real Scientists (TM) on his show. The guests will discuss the magazine and the importance of giving every viewpoint the same amount of media coverage.

For a limited time, CDG will offer a genuine alligator-hide display case for your bookshelf when you subscribe. Sales representatives were clear that the 13-Issue case will indeed have room for the much anticipated “A Very Colder Christmas” special issue. The case is styled to match a similar case offered with subscriptions to Answers in Genesis Magazine, and proceeds from the case will benefit the organization.

The Heritage Foundation called the new branding “…a win for scientific inquiry in the world today”, and speculators anticipate a doubling of profits from the previous quarter. Whether new subscribers will read the first issue, or just tweet photos of themselves holding the covers to run in the monthly Coal Roller of the Month column, remains to be seen.

Cars, trucks, busses, trains, and construction equipment. What does the future hold for these machines? Autonomous navigation and control. Most people would think this technology is far into the future, but the exciting (and perhaps daunting) prospect is that the technology is here and the advantages and disadvantages of it will be a reality sooner than you might think. Continue reading →

One of my top favorite drummers is working on a new album that reinvisions Porcupine Tree tracks in a big-band style. I play along to Porcupine Tree often, and being a drummer with jazz and swing foundations really makes me excited to play along to these tracks. Very much looking forward to hearing it!

In April of last year, I decided it was time to come up with a better system of to-do’s than the sticky notes and self-emails I had been relying on. With new responsibilities at home and at work, and to-do lists piling up for all sorts of different tasks and side projects, I needed a system that would work for me to keep everything together.

Rather than invent something myself, I spent quite a bit of time researching different methods people use, and even interviewed friends and colleagues for their opinions. While interested in the idea of using something electronic (read: my iPhone), the Type-A personality in me was looking for something with check boxes that could be satisfyingly checked with a pen.

Enter the Bullet Journal. While crediting the many people that have used something similar before, Ryder Carroll presents a take on the Bullet Journal by presenting the concept through website and video tutorials. I made a concerted effort to give it a shot. I started at the beginning of April, 2014 and gave myself a few weeks to see if it would work for me. Weeks grew into months, which continued for the remainder of the year, and by December it was time to order a fresh journal for 2015.

For anyone looking for something similar, I highly recommend it. I think it’s enabled me to be much more effective at getting things done by providing an avenue to track goals for the day, week, and month. I started with the blank Moleskine Classic Large Squared and I like the flexibility this provides.

Below is a comparison picture of my 2014 journal and a new journal, showing how nine months of ink and emotion add significant thickness and weight. The outside shows it’s wear as well, but the binding is very much intact and continues to serve in an archival role on the bookshelf.

As table top gaming is a hobby of mine, I’m always on the lookout for a new game to test out. I’ve played a few new table top games lately and I figured I would share my thoughts and do some reviews. Here’s the round up: Cards Against Humanity, Ticket to Ride, Glass Road.

Though I haven’t written much in the past year, I’ve been logging away thoughts (engineering, and otherwise). One in particular kept resonating with me last summer when looking over some road designs: how can you design a road for all vehicles without having driven them?

Designers rarely refer to books alone, but utilize experiences that back up the numbers. You’d be hard pressed to find a transportation engineer in the United States that has never driven a car; it’s the most prominent personal transportation method here. But you might more easily find transportation engineers that have never driven a motorcycle. Or an FHWA Class 8, four-axled truck and trailer. Yet we design roads daily, sometimes with the use of simulations, sometimes with nothing more than a reference guide and our engineering judgement. But there’s a disconnect there. Last October, I aimed to remedy one part of this problem and have some fun doing it: learn how to ride a motorcycle.

The MSF Course

I highly recommend the MSF Beginner Rider Course. In three days they have you prepped to pass the DMV rider test, without having ever ridden a motorcycle. Kim and I took the course together for fun and we had a blast. Click here to find a course near you.

Road Design

Lets look at a standard road curve. While many characteristics of road design have remained for years, roadway curves changed drastically with the invention of the automobile. Super-elevated roads, for example, were inspired by cant railways, where the two rails are designed at different elevations to accommodate a “banked turn”. As a road designer, it’s easy to check the Green Book to find super-elevation guidelines, but they mean so much more with a bit of experience behind the wheel; anyone who has driven a vehicle faster than 30 miles an hour can recognize the importance of a banked turn. Superelevation can be even more important to motorcycle riders. Leaning on a motorcycle is a fantastic way to appreciate how banked turns work to your advantage and the turns reinforce the importance of getting your spirals, runoff, and runout lengths correct.

Road designers also immediately appreciate other successes and deficiencies of road design while riding a motorcycle. Adequate drainage for sheet flow during a storm, stopping and decision sight distances, pavement cross slopes, the condition of the pavement, and locations of road debris accumulation all become much more apparent. The affect of ANY road condition that could develop into a traffic safety hazard magnifies a hundred-fold, as do the consequences of a collision. Experiencing these road conditions on two wheels can be both humbling and horrifying.

For those more interested in the physics side there is a whole subject on the mechanics of bicycle and motorcycles which explains leaning and counter-steering at high speeds. These, along with the center of gravity of the bike, can be used to calculate the maximum degree of lean possible.

Closing

Credit is rarely placed on the experiences many take for granted, so designers and engineers should always be looking for new experiences that share insight into their designs. I highly recommend the experience I’ve had, and I’ll be looking into a class on semis in the future. Perhaps a bit of time behind the wheel of a semi will lead to a better understanding of maneuverability on roads designed without trucks in mind. I encourage other road designers to do the same.

Topics

Archive

Friends

Mike Roselli, PE

Mike Roselli is a Civil Engineer and consultant, licensed in the States of NC, SC, GA, and FL, and is focused on providing land development services to clients building in the Triangle Area. He currently resides in Cary, NC.